Because Internet: Understanding the New Rules of Language

by Gretchen McCulloch

Based on the locations of these early trend pieces, it seems that minimalist typography is a younger-people thing. But there’s a catch-22 when it comes to analyzing youth language: your intuitions about it are inversely proportional to your ability to write about it. I can assert things with confidence about the slang of the 1990s and 2000s, but as the 2010s continue, I’m already feeling myself slipping out of touch, even as my platform to write about it grows larger. The point at which you’re a native speaker with the sharpest intuitions, the most deeply embedded into your particular youth subculture, with friends your age who think it would be a lark to let you analyze their posts or texts, is also the point when you’re likely to be writing your very first research paper or conference presentation, if you’re lucky. You know what’s cool, but no one knows who you are or why they should be reading you. Some linguists work on youth language by involving their undergraduate students; others by partnering with local schools. I do it via the internet. I started a blog called All Things Linguistic when I was still in grad school, and I made it on Tumblr because I was familiar with the platform from previous meme blogs. Initially, the blog was a way of not getting too high up the ivory tower. I started posting tips for students I was teaching, links to articles I was reading, and fun linguistic things that I came across in my everyday life. As I realized that I enjoyed this publi...